Grit Lab Report

Hi Justin,

Welcome to your personalized Grit Lab Report!

We will go week by week, reviewing everything you have told us through Poll Everywhere.

We hope this will help you reflect on what you have learned and experienced during Grit Lab.

Important note!

Sometimes, you may not have been able to respond to all polls.

If the data for one of the polls is missing, the automatic report will display NA, or ““.

Okay, let’s get started!

The first half of Grit Lab delves deep intp the passion facet of Grit.

We like to call it Choose Easy, because we think gritty people pursue what they enjoy.

Putting it graphically, gritty people tend to pursue the intersection of these four circles.

The first time we met, you told us where you were on the grit rubric.

Regarding passion you picked Stage 3: I’m actively figuring out what my interests are by trying one or more of them out in some way .

Regarding perseverance you picked .

As you know, grit grows, so don’t worry if you are not yet where you’d like to be in your grit journey.

Hopefully, this class will help you become grittier each day.

In week 2, we looked at your interests.

Interest is an emotion, and it is the opposite of boredom.

Your interests are the activities or subjects that spontaneously grab your attention.

Trying things out and seeing how you feel is the best way to refine your interests.

In week 3, we studied values, your beliefs about what is important.

You said your top three values were stimulation, hedonism, and benevolence.

You wrote a “This I Believe” essay, and here’s where you located it on Schwartz’s value taxonomy.

When we talked about strengths in week 4, you said your personality strength was conscientiousness.

You said your top three talents were spiritual, social, and kinesthetic.

We then talked about goal hierarchies.

You said you had a pretty good idea about your top-level goal.

We discussed self-concordance, or how much a goal aligns to your deeply held values and beliefs.

A goal you said you will be pursuing for the next six months is to get physically fit .

Here is how self-concordant that goal was:

Don’t worry if your self-concordance for that particular goal is low.

It might mean that you need to reframe that goal in a way that makes it more relevant to your deep self, or change it!

Remember that self-concordance is goal specific, so other goals might be more self-concordant.

We then transitioned to the second part of Grit Lab:

Work Smart

In week 6, we looked at goal setting and planning.

You WOOPed!

For your Wish, what you wanted to accomplish, you said 100 pushups everyday .

For your Outcome, what would happen if your wish came true, you said less guilty eating junk food .

For you Obstacle, what it is within you that stands in your way, you said different energy everyday .

For your Plan, you created this when-then plan to achieve your goal: when i stretch at night then i will do my pushups .

Whether you changed your WOOP or stuck to that one, here’s where it landed between being a total fail, and going exactly according to plan.

And here’s how much you learned

These goals are hard, and despite our best efforts, our plans can fail.

The important thing is that you learn something along the way!

In week 7, we talked about deliberate practice.

You shared you’ve done daily practice in sports .

We learned that deliberate practice requires a challenging, hyperspecific goal, maximum concentration, instant feedback, and is often done alone.

In week 8, we discussed feedback.

Even though feedback can be hard to take, it is often the key to improve. So if you want to improve, seek it actively!

You said you felt reflective when receiving critical feedback, and reflective when receiving positive feedback.

We then turned to learning about stress.

In week 9, you reported feeling a moderate amount of stress in your life right now, the primary source of it being physical health .

We also talked about adversity and failure.

Although related, adversity and failure are different:

Adversity happens to us, whereas failure is something for which we are generally more responsible.

However, how we interpret stress and failure matters…

Interestingly, research has found that people who believe that stress can facilitate learning and growth experience enhanced performance, well-being, and health.

And failure—not achieving a particular goal—can be interpreted as “I’m learning!” and lead you to look for the lesson in that experience.

We closed the Work Smart section of the class by talking about habits.

Throughout the semester, you practice habit building using your Build-A-Habit Guide book.

You describe the habit you chose as Health .

Whether you were successful in habit building or not, this is how much you learned.

Finally, what good is grit if we do not dream for others?

So, we transitioned to Paying it Forward.

In week 10, we looked at mentors: role models that take an active role in your growth.

Hopefully, your mentor was authoritative, being both supportive and demanding.

Here’s how you described them:

You also wrote a gratitude letter to Other .

In one word, you said it made you feel grateful .

One way of paying it forward is having a prosocial, beyond-the-self purpose. Here’s how you responded to items assessing that.

… and so quickly we arrived at the end of the semester.

Here’s how your mood varied over these weeks.

Do you notice any patterns? Is there anything that correlates with your mood?

Here you can scroll through all the quotes you wrote to summarize each class.

see everything within the realms of your interest
Prof Duckworth started her PhD in her early 30s. This actually aligned with the readings from before class.
The person I am in the classroom is the not the person I am at home.
connect everything to a higher goal
pure positivity is indulgence
effort is counted twice
sadness is a downward stream of a thought that lowered self esteem
there is positive effects of stress on performance
habit formulation is based off dopamine response
having effective mentors decently removed
its actually really easy to give

In the final class, we looked back to everything we’ve learned together and to how our passion and perseverance evolved during this class.

Here are the comments from your Grit Lab Teammates:

Hannah Zhao
Justin, I appreciate your candidness and level-headedness. You kept our team down-to-earth and hearing your anecdotes about self-improvement impressed me. Like deleting social media (how is that going, by the way?) and waking up early to work out. You don’t give yourself enough credit for the traits that your friends definitely appreciate you for! Wishing you the best 🙌 Your Discovery Project was so on brand for you! I liked how your slides had just the right amount of information and they were very pleasing to the eye. I appreciated your introduction and the context of how it connected to your family. I’m glad to hear how the project turned out well for you and it sounds like it was aligned with your personal goals. I hope you keep going!
Martina Bulgarelli
Dear Justin, I want to express my appreciation for the unique qualities that make you stand out in our discussions. Your contributions consistently blend insightfulness with respect, creating an environment that encourages diverse perspectives and brings out the best in everyone. Your adeptness at infusing humor into even the most serious conversations is something I truly value. Your Discovery project presentation on meditation and internationality left a lasting impression on me. Your candidness and sincerity were refreshing, and your exploration of the connection between mindfulness and eating habits was particularly intriguing. Your commitment to in-depth research, as evidenced by delving into six books, is commendable and speaks volumes about your dedication. Beyond your intellectual contributions, I'm grateful for your kindness and caring nature. Your support for your teammates, exemplified by your thoughtful gestures like getting me candy knowing my sweet tooth, makes a significant positive impact. Witnessing your personal growth has been truly inspiring. The fact that you managed to implement 3 habits in your life demonstrates assertiveness and a strong commitment to self-improvement. Your example serves as an inspiration, and I am motivated to follow in your footsteps. I want to start implementing alone time in my life here at Penn.

We hope you have emerged from Grit Lab a little grittier than you started.

Do you want to see how your grit rubric changed?

Drumroll please…

Don’t worry if the rubric doesn’t yet reflect growth. It is only a coarse measure that cannot replace your own self-reflection.

In any case, grit is not built in a day…

…remember that progress is never smooth…

…so stay passionate and persevering in the lifelong quest of choosing easy, working smart, and paying it forward.

With grit and gratitude,

Angela and the Grit Lab team.